“Let’s make them empathize with the jailed billionaire” is what level of out-of-touch

For Lai, Hong Kong was everything that China was not - deeply capitalist, a land of opportunity and limitless wealth, and free. In the city, which was still a British colony when he arrived in 1959, he found success - and then a voice.

Thanks god for China.

From a guide to hiring prostitutes in the “adult section” to investigative reports, to columns by economists and novelists, it was a “buffet” targeting “a full range of readers”, said Francis Lee, a journalism professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

By his early 20s, he was managing a textile factory and after making money on the stock market, he started his own, Comitex Knitters. He was 27.

small bean sweat shop owner

Business often took Lai to New York, and on one of those trips, he was lent a book that came to define his worldview: The Road to Serfdom by Nobel Prize-winning economist Friedrich Hayek, a champion of free-market capitalism.

After a decade in manufacturing, he was “bored” and founded the clothing chain Giordano in 1981, which became a fast-fashion pioneer.

Protesters occupied the city’s main commercial districts for 79 days. Lai turned up from 9am to 5pm every day, undeterred after a man threw animal entrails at him.

Five years later, in 2019, Hong Kong erupted again, this time because of a controversial plan that would have allowed extradition to mainland China.

Wasn’t that extradition treaty brought on by a guy literally murder and butcher his girlfriend?

What began as peaceful marches became increasingly violent, turning the city into a battleground for six months. Black-clad protesters threw bricks and Molotov cocktails, stormed parliament and started fires; riot police fired tear gas, rubber bullets, water cannons and live rounds.

American police would have opened fire on day one, just saying.

Lai’s family has been calling for his release for years, citing concerns for his health because he is diabetic, but their calls have been rejected so far. The government and Lai’s Hong Kong legal team have said that his medical needs are being met.

In like the second paragraph you said he was losing weight while eating rice and pickled ginger. If anything it sounds like prison is making him healthier. The guards should put his rice in the freezer to make the starch more starch more resistant.

During the height of the protests, Lai flew to the US where he met then Vice-President Mike Pence to discuss the situation in Hong Kong. A month before the National Security Law was imposed, Lai launched a controversial campaign, despite internal pushback, urging Apple Daily readers to send letters to then US President Donald Trump to “save Hong Kong”.

“Light treason, Michael.”

The BBC are really blowing smoke up his arse

With that said, the article doesn’t contain a single “authoritarian”, “totalitarian” or “dictator”.

I do want to respond to one line:

Beijing says Hong Kong has now moved from “chaos to governance” and onto “greater prosperity” because of the national security law and a “patriot-only” parliament. But critics, including hundreds of thousands of Hongkongers who have since left, say dissent has been stifled, and the city’s freedoms severely curbed.

166,000 took advantage of the UK migration policy that opened up. That does not mean they were running away or anything, merely that a very easy method of migration became available and some people took advantage of it. Implying that all of these people have said dissent is stifled and the city’s freedoms curbed is also highly misleading and outright dangerous to imply of all these people, many of which will return and still have family in China. Slandering them this way is not ok.

Also that figure is barely even a blip compared to total population:

ABAB

This from the crowd that loves saying “fuck around and find out”